


Up in Smoke

by astrid_fischer



Series: 'le révolutionnaire', an a.b.c. press publication [7]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Modern Era, Multi, Newspaper!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/pseuds/astrid_fischer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I light the A.B.C. Press on fire (but it doesn't end up as badly as you might think).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up in Smoke

Eponine stumbles down the smoke-filled stairway with an arm flung up to cover her mouth, feeling the reassuring pressure of Gavroche’s smaller hand in hers as she drags him onward. He stumbles on one of the bottom steps, and she catches his fall, hoisting him up onto her hip as they reach the street with a shocking slap of cool, clean air.

“You okay, brat?” she gasps, frantically pushing her brother’s dirty-blonde hair off his forehead and peering down at him, but he only coughs and nods, burying his face in her shoulder even though her jacket probably smells like smoke.

She closes her eyes and hugs him to her, one hand on the back of his head. It’s not often that he’ll let her hug him, anymore—normally he rolls his eyes and squirms away when she tries. But right now he clings to her just as hard, and she’s grateful for it. The bone-deep panic of _I might have lost my little brother_ still has a fierce hold on her.

Enjolras and Combeferre leap from the bottom of the stairwell, arms stuffed full of papers and manila folders. Enjolras has the press’ main laptop jammed under one arm, and three others held to his chest. Marius is right after them, empty-handed but pulling a whimpering Bahorel along with him.

Bahorel had been the one closest to the faulty microwave, leaning against a file cabinet nearby while he waited for his mac and cheese to heat up. The microwave in question had made a horrible sound in the middle of its cycle, shattered its glass with a burst of sparks and a flicker of flame, and shorted out the electricity for the whole office.

They had been too busy, in the shocked seconds following the malfunction, busy making sure that Bahorel wasn’t hurt, to notice that the stack of newspapers on a nearby desk had caught fire like kindling.

It had taken only a minute for the whole top floor of the building to be full of smoke, fire spreading over the wooden desks and wooden floors and haphazard stacks of newsprint and paper. There were no safety sprinklers and no fire extinguisher on hand—the only thing to do was get the hell out.

Bahorel has minor burns on his hands and face, and Marius sits him down on the other side of the street, murmuring sympathetic words and trying to establish with steady fingers how much damage has been done. Marius may be a spaz most of the time, but he’s good in a crisis.

Joly will know better, but Joly’s nowhere to be seen. The thought has only just entered Eponine’s mind, with a horrible renewed jolt of dread, when someone else appears, tripping out of the stairwell.

It’s Joly, supporting an unconscious Bossuet, with dirt and tears streaked on his face and scrapes on his hands.

“I don’t know what happened,” he manages, voice hoarse from smoke. “Everything was fine and then the _microwave_ and who even knew a microwave could do that and…Bossuet, I don’t know if he’s,” Joly breaks off, Joly who’s been premed for three years and prides himself on his speedy pulse-taking skills.

“I don’t know if he’s,” he tries again, and makes a slight choking sound. “I can’t tell—”

“Give him here,” Marius says, wiping the back of one hand over his soot-sweaty forehead, and when Joly only continues to babble he puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder and squeezes. “Joly,” he says with gentle force, and Joly’s wild green eyes finally fix on his own. “He’s going to be fine. Give him here.”

“Jehan and Courfeyrac,” Combeferre calls urgently to Enjolras, whose blue eyes are wild as he looks up at the flames licking out A.B.C. Press’ open windows. “Where are they?”

But footsteps are already audible on the cobblestoned street, and a half-second later Courf and Jehan round the corner at a run. Courfeyrac’s white v-neck is stained with sweat and soot and Jehan is limping slightly, but otherwise they look unharmed.

“The way to the door was blocked,” Courfeyrac explains, shaking his head as they draw nearer. His customary nonchalance is gone, his movements jerky and his eyes continually straying back to Jehan as Combeferre helps the shorter man sit down. “We had to go out the window.”

The limp makes sense now—the ancient ladder of the fire escape doesn’t reach all the way to the ground. They would have had to drop at least ten feet, and if Courf had made Jehan go out the window first (which of course he would have) he wouldn’t have been able to help him down at the bottom.

Enjolras is yelling into his phone now, raking a hand through his blonde hair and telling whoever’s on the other end of the line to _just fucking send help, now_.

“My hero,” Jehan murmurs fondly, tilting his head back to look up at Courfeyrac and touching reassuring fingers to the other man’s bare ankle. Courf closes his eyes.

Jehan’s voice is smoke-hoarse, and his breathing is labored, but he seems almost to be the calmest of all of them. “Is everyone out?” he asks, looking up at them all with worried brown eyes as Combeferre pulls off one of Jehan’s red Converse and peels off the heart-patterned sock beneath so he can prod carefully at the swollen ankle.

“It’s Feuilly’s day off,” Combeferre says, half to himself, “Eponine has Gavroche…” he trails off and glances around at the others as if counting.

His hands go still in the middle of ascertaining whether or not Jehan’s broken something, and he snaps his head up to look at the press’ leader, who has just hung up on the fire brigade or the police or whoever it is he was calling.

“ _Enjolras_ ,” he says in a tightly controlled voice, but the expression on the editor’s face makes it clear he’s already realized.

Marius is busy making sure Bossuet, whose eyes are still closed, is breathing normally (and thank every god known to man, he is) so he only just looks up in time to see the flash of blonde and red and _idiocy_ as Enjolras makes for the burning building.

Marius shouts something, he’s not sure what, but he should’ve known words would have no effect.

Marius pushes aside a horrified Joly to follow after the other man, but he already knows he won’t get there in time. Enjolras is too fast (or too determined) and he has too much of a head start and yes, Marius is really going to have to follow him into a  _fucking_ burning building.

Eponine screams something at Enjolras and tries to grab at his arm. “Enjolras, _stop_ , he’s not—” but he’s not listening

(because all that’s in his mind is the last image he has of Grantaire, who had come into the office hungover two hours ago — still drunk, really, because they’d argued the night before and Grantaire’s favorite way of punishing Enjolras is to get belligerently drunk — and fallen asleep at his desk, and he’s the deepest sleeper Enjolras has ever met and _he isn’t out here with them_ )

and Eponine is holding Gavroche so she can’t leap for him, and Marius is too far back, and Enjolras has already reached the doorway.

It’s someone else who catches Enjolras on the first step, who seizes him around the middle and hauls them both backwards so savagely that they topple over, sprawling onto the unforgiving cobblestones of the street just as a charred beam breaks loose and slams down onto the staircase where Enjolras had been a second before, splintering wood and emitting a shower of sparks as the building groans in protest—it was built in 1815, after all, and was unstable enough even when it _wasn’t_ on fire.

Marius can hear sirens drawing nearer, can hear men calling to each other from the main street.

“ _What the_ _hell were you thinking_?” Grantaire shouts hoarsely at Enjolras, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. His elbow is bleeding from the impact, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His bloodshot brown eyes are furious, his hair more of a mess than usual.

There’s an abandoned paper bag lying on the ground behind him, spilling out cigarettes and candy and a paper-wrapped something that might be a sandwich.

A red fire engine squeals to a halt at the curb on Rue St. Michel and men begin pouring out of it, unhooking hoses and shouting instructions to each other as booted feet run past.

Enjolras only lies there where he’s fallen, propped up on one elbow, staring back at Grantaire. Faint spots of color have appeared in his cheeks.

“I thought,” he says in a voice that doesn’t sound very like him at all. None of them have ever seen the press’ editor at such a loss.

He doesn’t say what it is he’d thought, and he doesn’t have to.

Grantaire’s eyes widen just a fraction, and he shakes his head slowly.

“I went out to the corner shop,” he says gently to Enjolras, and a wry smile turns the corners of his lips. “Fifteen minutes ago. Figures you wouldn’t even notice if I’m in the office or—”

Now Enjolras moves, and cuts off whatever Grantaire was going to say by kissing him hard, winding a hand into the unruly brown curls at the nape of his neck and gripping his shirt collar with the other, dragging the other man as close as he can possibly get. It’s as if he wants to make them into one person.

He doesn’t seem to care that they’re both knelt on unforgiving cobblestones or that firemen in black and red are now hurrying past and around them to get to the burning building, or that their friends are beginning to look away and clear their throats deliberately.

“You beautiful idiot,” Grantaire murmurs when they break apart, taking Enjolras’ face between his hands and pressing their foreheads together. “Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily?”

Enjolras mutters something darkly that no one but Grantaire can hear, and his fingers are still fisted in the other man’s shirt, and Grantaire surrenders himself to be kissed firmly on the mouth, then the nose, on both cheeks, on his forehead, and on the mouth again, as the dark-haired man just about melts against Enjolras’ warm, solid body.

Eponine, who had seen Grantaire leave (it wasn’t as if he’d been overly quiet about it, either, for Christ’s sake), slumps against the wall, feeling exhaustion wash over her.

“Still okay?” she asks Gavroche quietly, tapping his skinned knee, and he nods once without saying anything. She knows he’ll start fidgeting in a minute and make her put him down so he can strut over to the boys, but she’s glad for the extra few seconds.

The firemen come by to tell them they’ll all have to move further away, which thankfully interrupts the increasingly horizontal public display of affection taking place in the middle of their group.

Paramedics will be arriving to take care of the burns, they’re told, and everyone gets up together like some sort of unwieldy twenty-legged beast, some of them half-carrying others and everyone sticking so closely to each other’s sides that they must look ridiculous to the firemen still milling about.

Bossuet is conscious now, if bleary, and he lets Combeferre and Joly support him on both sides while his head lolls on Joly’s shoulder.

Courf has one arm securely around Jehan’s waist, walking more slowly so the little poet doesn’t have to put too much weight on his injured ankle. He had offered to carry him off “like a princess,” but Jehan had informed him that he would have no choice but to swoon away at such a display of manly heroism, and walking was probably much safer for all involved.

Bahorel is fine to walk, and Marius keeps pace with him, cell phone pressed to his ear as he explains the situation to Cosette. Eponine sets Gavroche down reluctantly, but he’s sure to stay close, when normally he would’ve run and skipped ahead.

Enjolras collects the assorted laptops and scattered notes (the ones Combeferre hasn’t already tucked under one arm) from where he’d abandoned them on the ground, but he won’t let go of Grantaire’s hand, and Grantaire frankly looks more pleased than anyone should have any right to be with sirens wailing and building on fire behind him.

Getting their injuries sorted and dealing with preliminary insurance issues only takes about forty-five minutes (during which time no one is willing to leave the others, despite the fact that only Bahorel really needs medical care and only Enjolras and Combeferre are responsible for the press on paper), and then they’re released. The officials definitely think they’re all insane.

“Where are we going?” Courf calls back over one shoulder as they walk along the sidewalk down the Rue du Villette in twos and threes, drawing stares from everyone they pass (whether because some of them are clearly injured or because Grantaire, who is very much taking advantage of Enjolras’ _I thought my boyfriend was trapped in a burning building_ state of mind, has his hands all but down Enjolras’ jeans while they’re walking, or because Bossuet is wearing red leopard-print jeggings, a silver mesh shirt, and sequined black Toms, it’s not clear).

“To Combeferre’s!” Jehan suggests cheerily. “It’s closest. And he has the nicest decor,” he adds seriously to Courfeyrac, who grins at him. Combeferre makes a humming sound to indicate his assent.

“Forget the couch, I’ll take the floor,” Bahorel groans, looking down at his mummy-bandaged hands morosely. “I’m going to lie down as soon as I’m on carpet.”

“We’ll step around you,” Courf says charitably.

“I won’t,” Eponine comments from the middle of the group, and Bahorel sticks his tongue out at her.

“Not to upset anyone,” Joly speaks up with a nervous glance back at the editor, “but what are we going to do about the press?”

“We keep printing,” Enjolras says simply, as if this should be quite obvious. His eyes are as blue as the sky above them (the only sign of the fire now is a smudge of grey a few streets back) and his arm is firm around Grantaire’s waist. “We have everything on archive and a fair amount of the hard copies. We wait until the building is fixed, or we find a new one.”

“We’ll be alright,” Combeferre sums up.

And somehow, Eponine knows they will.

**Author's Note:**

> embarrassed to admit how much it hurt me to set the fictional press I made up on fire -- don't worry, they'll work something out (perhaps cosette's adoptive father can front them the money for a new office space...?)


End file.
